​Dr. Alex Cordero-Casanovas completed his Ph.D. in Biomedicine at University of Barcelona, Spain, in 2015. His graduate work focused on the study of the impact of RANK overexpression on mammary stem cell fate, alveolar cell differentiation and tumorigenesis. Using in vitro and in vivo approaches, he demonstrated that constitutive expression of RANK signaling interferes with mammary basal and luminal cell commitment, resulting in accumulation of Mammary Stem Cells (MaSC), luminal and bipotent progenitors, and the formation of heterogeneous mammary adenocarcinomas. He also investigated the cooperation of RANKL with other oncogenic pathways such as PYMT or HER2, and characterized the impact of RANK signaling on Cancer Stem Cells (CSC) and tumor cell of origin. In the lab, Alex’s work will focus on the therapeutic role of neural stem Ccells in HER2+ breast cancer brain metastasis.